Get On Your Boots

WARNING: As a still-current song, opinion may yet change and significant alterations to the post may occur as said opinion changes or new details emerge.

Well, this has caused a stir. It seems that no-one can decide whether this is a “Vertigo” retread or something new. Well let’s look at the facts – first of all, where “Vertigo”’s riff is very much a chorded blooze-rock piece, “Get On Your Boots”, whilst ostensibly Led Zeppelin-ish (but with slightly “Fly”-esque wah effect), actually has most to do with “Discotheque”, only the distortion here allows it to roll and flow too much to render it too similar. Edge also goes and plays chords (D and G) in the verses, which wasn’t present on “Vertigo”, and the chorus is actual weirdly atonal, all major-triad chromaticism that completely flips what would be a cliched lyric (You don’t know how beautiful you are) into a deeply strange sentiment indeed. I assume, of course, that what I’ve quoted is a chorus, because the titular refrain might well count too. Outside of these riffs, Edge also adds various fret noises, a bit of extra jangle at the end, and some classic Boy U2 riffage in the bridge, some feedback to finish the song, and what must surely be the shortest guitar solo ever – at six notes, he’s surely gunning for the job of being Kirk Hammett’s arch nemesis.

So the “Vertigo”-retread theory is demolished here, because it’s taken 200 words to largely describe one band member’s efforts here. Indeed, arguably the only true, completely valid  similarity is in tempo, in which this song crams ten extra beats per minute over “Vertigo”’s 140bpm. “Vertigo” contained no overdubs for at least the first two minutes, whereas this has them before the first line, and then adds various beats and percussion, a glockenspeil and the sound of leather rubbing. Larry’s drumming is layered and driving, but such is the detail that it just about makes an impression, until the bridge where that impression suddenly becomes huge, the terse echo slightly disguising that this might be an overdubbed job too. It might sound great live, but the bigger question is how it’ll be done without huge alterations. Maybe it can’t.

Adam seems to have shifted least since 2005, and his bassline does initially double the verse riff, but on the chorus it shifts into something more independent, a faster version of the sort of thing that happens on “With Or Without You” where 8th/16th note runs on one note combine. It also drifts in and out of fuzz, which is relatively new and different, as Adam often seems to be the eye of the storm, simply getting on with dealing with the low end without getting caught up in the other three’s madness. It seems here, however, that even he isn’t safe.

As usual, the biggest contention so far seems to be about Bono; are his lyrics a rip from Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan or (from detractors, it seems) 80s one-hit wonders Escape Club? We could say it sounds like R.E.M.’s “It’s The End of the World…”, but frankly, to make any of these lazy comparisons is boneheaded  – why not simply say that it’s a stream-of-consciousness lyric? And like a stream-of-conciousness lyric, it pulls out all kinds of odd juxtapositions, including Satan, suicide bombers, funfairs, liberal feminism, ice cream and submarines, not to mention the sly, overt humour and irony (see Bono’s recent message to Obama) of the line I don’t wanna talk about wars between nations – not right now! It’s a headspinning mix, unafraid to be somewhat gauche, and it crams more into three and a half minutes than anything off the last two albums. Is this the return to the 90s? In spirit, yes, but the song is overall one but not the same. Quite simply, I welcome the band back, and I’d say it’s the best U2 song this decade.

Also, the video is mental.

Discotheque

First of all, this:

A|-5----------7----------5------------------------|
E|----7-5-7-----7-5-7------7-5-7--7-7-5-7--------|

Yes, this might well be the greatest riff in all of U2, which is why it simply must be reprinted here. Of course, the other major aspect defining “Discotheque” is that it prompts Super-Fun Things A U2 Fan Could Do With A Time Machine #2, which is to go back to a decade before the single’s release (set your DeLorean to February 3rd, 1987) and describe the video, which pretty much is the last in a run of utter visual classics (the Zooropa era had particular greatness in this regard). Yet, of course, said video provoked a backlash, because in the end a great number of U2’s fans are somewhat, well, American and thus prone to discophobia, instead preferring something very white and electric-guitar led. “Discotheque” is, but dressing up as the Village People, the band gave the impression of it being otherwise.

Even so, to hell with empty backlashes and reactionism; the guitar and synthesisers in this song pull out riff after brilliant riff, unsteady and slightly chaotic in their melodic contours – the one above, for example, bouncing around various perfect intervals, and the post-chorus (Looking for the one/But you know you’re…) one zig-zags as if fighting to gain control of itself. The way it’s all fuzzed out, too, is insane – I initially thought the main riff was chorded, but this is all a good thing. Like “Mofo”, the sheer detail, the bits of squelching synthesiser and mass of cowbell all overload the system, which ironically would’ve have made the song perfect for ZooTV. In any event, the sheer OTT nature of it all certainly set it up well for the lunacy of PopMart – indeed, it was usually the first song of the encore once the band emerged from the Lemon. The other remarkable thing is that, whilst Pop was not viewed (and still isn’t) as an utter renewal of U2 soundwise, this song is them sounding like they’re from outer space again, as the band argued they did with The Unforgettable Fire. Sure, you could point influences – Underworld, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Depeche Mode, Blur, Saint Etienne – but none of these truly take too much hold.

Lyrically, the subject matter varies. If you believe Bono, it’s a “Paul McCartney song” about love (You just can’t get enough/Of that lovey-dovey stuff), and if you believe, well, anyone else, it’s obviously about ecstasy and mindless sex (You know you’re chewing bubblegum/You know what that is but you still want some), although this isn’t something the band ruled out. In essence, then, it’s the most effective song on Pop when it comes to what the band intended, which was apparently a lightness that nonetheless acknowledged darker aspects of society (with the link, by the way, you want “Jo Whiley Radio 1 in Dublin”).

Whilst the lyrics do hold a depth underneath their apparent lightness, that lightness is very much trying to assert itself, not least at the end when any subtlety is removed with a coda of BOOM-CHA!. With self-consciousness, this is embarrassing, but U2 aren’t often about self-consciousness, and they’re certainly not here. To sort-of quote Stylus Magazine on this song, “it works as a symbol for [the late 1990s] at large; extremely risky, more than a little embarrassing, but kind of awesome and infinitely preferable to [today]“. Damn right – “Discotheque” and its parent album, I’d argue, captures what I remember of 1997 far more than the most overhyped record of that year (OK Computer, for those unaware.) in that, yes, those were relatively stable and happy times in the (Western?) world – the Bosnian War fading, the Clinton presidency rumbling on steadily, the optimism of early New Labour – even if they were filled with an undercurrent of dread and perhaps outright fear – the whole Y2K panic amongst the IT-illiterate, the debate (in the UK) over the sovereignty-sapping Euro, and the Asian financial crisis. Some may question whether “Discotheque” stood up to the test of time, but today’s music is all too often so backward-looking, ripping from every previous decade instead of forming new ideas for the 2000s that, if anything, the test is yet to come. It may never come.

Actually, what may be “Discotheque”’s greatest virtue is a virtue in all the best U2 songs, but maybe most here, in that it can be what you want it to be. It can be a smart commentary on society, or it can be a dumb singalong. It can be a rocker (the New Mix or Vertigo tour version) or the complex electronica piece it is on record. The band makes it open enough for the interpretation to be about, erm, your opinion too. And it’s an invitation I gladly accept.

Numb

Super-Fun Things A U2 Fan Could Do With A Time Machine #1: go back to July 5th, 1991 and explain to them what kind of material the band will put out in a mere two years. Even compared to Achtung Baby, many of the basic premises behind “Numb” seem incredibly, ludicrously insane – the Edge, not singing, but rapping? The weird main riff that pitch-bends each note, the random squeals of noise and crowds cheering in the manner of some sort of sound collage or musique concrete piece, and the incredibly repetitive lyrics. And when listed like that, it should be a trainwreck – not in the usual “shouldn’t work, but does” manner, but in a really, really bad way, which makes it all the more remarkable that this might be one of U2’s best songs, even relatively unsullied by remixes. Yes, the Gimme Some More Dignity Mix doesn’t give the song any more dignity (or brilliance), and the New Mix added a guitar riff that, whilst lovely, made the song slightly too tasteful. But we can ignore these.

Beginning with a deep kick and reverbed hit, an isolated feel that sounds not unlike a dripping from a ceiling, possibly with footsteps, before the first strain of melody. It’s not entirely possible it’s a guitar, or a synthesiser, but what the hell it is doesn’t sound like an instrument in a healthy state. And in a kind of minimalist brilliance, that’s pretty much the musical foundation of the song, a few unhinged chords. Oh, and a beat that does, admittedly, evolve into something slightly more complex come the second verse, adding slightly militaristic use of snares. Said snares turn out to be sampled, and whilst scanning credits often reveal U2’s tendency to lift from odd sources, here the source is an 11 year old at the 1936 Olympic Games, drumming for Nazi Germany. Add to this what might either be a very treble-laden synthesiser or the sound of tape being rewound, and a suitably blipping, wah’d-out oscillation that’s presumably designed to sound like the FX from Space Invaders (at risk of sounding boastful, I don’t remember Space Invaders, so there’s a Schrodinger’s Cat thing going on there).

Still, it’s appropriate that a young Nazi drummer gets sampled, because the lyrics tumble down imperatives in a long monotone, reportedly edited down from eight pages of material. I say imperatives, i.e. plural, but the truth is there’s only one, for the most part: Don’t. That cunningly fits a dual theme, both that of satirising and commenting on the nature of fascism (Don’t speak out or question the goverment, Don’t talk out of time/Don’t think) – a sharp topic given the ideology’s upturn in Europe in the early 1990s, most notably in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s increasing presence.

There’s also the matter of the sheer quantity of it giving subliminal restriction, an overwhelming, which means that within a few verses the key refrain (I feel numb) becomes appropriate – the voice simply rolls over any protest. It’s not the quality of lyrics that makes an impact, oddly; it’s the sheer quantity, the fact that so many lines, swarming all over the inlay booklet page in small type, batter the listener into submission with their sheer rhythm. This overwhelming, of course, ties into the themes of ZooTV and Zooropa, which effectively makes “Numb” the “Zoo Station” of this album. But of course, Zooropa is Zooropa, which means that this manifesto of sorts is perversely placed at track three. That said, “Zooropa” is also a manifesto of sorts for the album, so it can’t go there. And “Lemon” also steps into the role, in a way. What an album. And what a song – U2’s most unique, certainly, and definitely one of their very best.

One

This song may well be an anthem to end all anthems; whilst initially becoming a defacto one for AIDS, seeing as it was effectively a charity single for said cause, it kind-of morphed into a sort of 9/11 anthem ten years later, and is apparently a popular wedding choice for the undiagnosed deaf. It was voted the best song of all time by Q Magazine (pah) and as having the greatest lyrics of all time (One life, with each other/Sisters, brothers) by a VH1 poll. It is, in any event, often roped in with “Streets” and “With Or Without You” as the primary nominations for U2’s Greatest Song (well, not here it ain’t, but the point stands), and it’s also credited as The Song That Saved U2. Clearly the band are grateful – it’s been played at every concert since its introduction, and more so than “Streets” and “40″ (both of which have had their setlist omissions), the band are seemingly obliged to at least do an insipid runthrough of it at every single gig they will ever do. So…no baggage, then.

The music (and the lyrics, if we’re honest) are now incredibly familiar, as is the making-of story – band moves to Berlin, band struggles with bleeps, strange noises and uninspired bits of material, Edge in particular struggles with two chord progressions (Am/D/F7/G and C/Am/F7/C by the looks of things), the suggestion arises to put the two together, et voila, the song suddenly appears, band is saved. The music has an austerity to it – Adam in particular stands out as oddly placed to do this sort of song, although Larry’s previous experience which, well, not outright bashing (I’m thinking “Love Rescue Me”) makes him adept enough to undertake a suitably understated part. But this isn’t ultimately about music – all an anthem ever needs is for the music to be there, and to rise as it does at the end, hints of traditional U2 in the gleaming but steady (walking treble?) notes (no 3/16th delay making all that slightly jangly contour to the melody).

And lyrically, because this must be utterly nailed into the minds of everyone who cares – it’s not to be played at a wedding. This should be painstakingly obvious – We hurt each other/Then we do it again is immediate evidence for it. The song is also as bitter as it is prepared to offer an olive branch, the turns of phrase particularly designed to twist the thorn into the antagonist’s side – the most brilliant one being Have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head? Yet, as the band point out, the key line is We get to carry each other. There’s awareness of cruelty, atrocity even, but despite this knowledge there’s a willingness to reach out and embrace others all the same.

It is, essentially, managing to detail the best and worst of humanity, suggesting a wider context but also being in the deeply personal. All of this ultimately renders “One” neither too specific nor too universal, and overall it’s a song that manages, more often than not, to temper its extremities, although I can’t place “One” at, well, the number one position in the U2 canon because there maybe aren’t enough musical extremities to temper. Still, the song’s regarded as a classic, and it’d be hugely controversial not to declare it otherwise; luckily, to deny it classic status would be insincere.

Mofo

Around 1957, rock’n'roll was a new thing, with what was still a relatively new trick, the electrification of guitars. Said electric guitar was the musical equivalent of a nuclear warhead, devastating in its sheer volume to the extent of obliterating acoustic basses and weak drumming. Fifty years on from that, though, was the first time I heard M.I.A.’s “20 Dollar” through a record store sound system, and I realised at that exact point that guitars just aren’t the ultimate in heavy music machinery anymore. When armed with silicon chips, you can enact a kind of implacable, utterly focused abrasion that renders guitars tinny and scrappy by comparison. And naturally, this means that one of the most likely contenders for hardest, heaviest U2 song is “Mofo”.

It begins with a small bass rumble, as if to literally suggest a storm brewing, and before we know it there’s a masses of bubbling, snapping bursts of electronic noise and a thwacking of metallic drums. At 0:27, we get the song proper, with the introduction of an undulating synth line that, yes, is slightly reminiscent of Underworld as so many reviewers have pointed out. What Underworld have never done, though, is what enters at 0:35, a great shrieking guitar slide, echoed out to sound as huge and piercing as possible. In fact, the guitar here is a) very much present, and b) full of these odd noises, bending and sliding and never seemingly able to hold a note for one pick of a string, although there rarely seems to be more than one in any given “riff”, which makes the whole part a masterpiece in sheer minimalism. At the three-minute point, or thereabouts, a series of programmed-sounding hi-hats come in, even though the drumming is apparently organic – in any event, what’s real and what’s not is almost impossible to tell here anyway, because the sheer density of the production means that certain small blips, grinds and other noises flash by unnoticed on any given listen. There could be a frickin’ banjo in there; no-one outside the band would ever know.

At 2:26 a strange calm emerges for a brief moment as the song enters the bridge, and it reappears at 4:39 too, as to suggest that a reprieve might come, but of course it never does, and the song fades out with the same dense, messy mass of machinery plunging onwards. It has left us, but it will never leave the protagonist. I mentioned Underworld earlier, and of course what adds to the heaviness of “Mofo” is the kind of deeply twisted lyric that Karl Hyde has never really done. To be fair, that’s because Hyde deals in absurdities and abstractions, looking at club culture with a slightly weary attitude to its crassness, whereas here there’s a bigger issue – yes, once again it’s Bono’s mother, and following on from “I Will Follow”, “Tomorrow” and “Lemon”, I’ll argue that this manages to up the stakes from those predecessors. Here the tone is tough, hard and sexual, presumably to cover up the vulnerability, but understandably (but still disturbingly), these two aspects merge together – the issue is “mother”, the attitude is “fucker”, the result is a “motherfucker” of a song. This attitude can’t keep on forever, though, and those glowing keyboards at 2:26 and 4:39 rip off the mask and expose weakness (Mother, am I still your son?).

The drama, sheer noise and conflation of extremes into something genuinely surrealist – not just odd, because this does seem to be from the subconcious – and disturbing (a song about one’s mother effectively called “Motherfucker” ain’t exactly healthy) is what makes this one of U2’s great songs, and such a fanstastic way to close Pop’s manic opening quarter. In fact, if I’m honest, I reckon there are probably only a few songs that top this in the entire U2 discography. I hereby challenge you all to prove me wrong.

Stay (Faraway, So Close!)

After four songs of strange noises and voices, pianos, keyboards, synthesisers, fuzzed-out and dub-style guitars, heavy bass, and rarely a naturally acoustic drum in sight, “Stay (With Inevitable Wim Wenders Film Title In Brackets To Avoid Confusion With The Eleven Squillion Other Songs By This Title)” seems like a compromise towards standard, normal U2; certainly, this is the only song from Zooropa to get a standard, normal single release (#4 UK, #61 US) and one of the few to sound like a pure rock ballad. Yet it’s not that simple (is it ever? All the same…). The loping guitar line repeats over and over in the verses as if it’s been looped, and the bass effectively doubles it. Yes, it’s a rock song, but it’s one behaving like a piece of downtempo, complete with its steady tempo, regular rhythm and odd textures, drones and janglings, most notably in the pre-chorus. That said, it does move into a chorus that is pure U2 lift, and actually one of the few bits of recorded ZooTV-era U2 to actually justify a lot of the croonerish b-side material (“I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, which incidentally b-sided this, and “Night And Day” being the most notable examples).

Lyrically, Bono commented that the song was about an unworkable relationship, and that “observing and the desire to intervene can poison everything.” This makes sense, given the pre-choruses (And if you look, you look through me/And when you talk it’s not to me/And when I touch you, you don’t feel a thing) The song also shares themes with the Wim Wenders film of a similar name, which explored the idea of angels visiting Earth. The song detours at various points, though, offering up interesting couplets that work whilst self-contained; the image of someone stumbling out of a hole in the ground, which the narrator reflects on as an ambiguous event differing according to perception. Then there’s the sad, depressed individual (possibly an brought-to-earth angel) who could lip-synch to the talk shows, suggesting someone deeply insular who, judging by that action, finds something very predictable about human behaviour.

In the third verse, several cities (not all European, despite the themes of the album, although the mention of 7Eleven suggests an American setting, which may explain this) are referenced, and they happen to be significant to U2 – Miami, which the band visited and wrote about a few years later; New Orleans, which came into play in 2006 with “The Saints Are Coming” and Music Rising; Belfast, the epicentre of the Troubles, and Berlin, which was obviously the starting location for Achtung Baby. The final point to note is the last verse, which Wim Wenders himself cited as a particularly great set of lines, and I’m inclined to agree – the singer’s voice easing downwards along the lines Just the bang and the clatter/As an angel hits the ground, followed by an illustrative bash of a cymbal, is a great ending to the album’s side one. Where “Stay” on initial listens can sound a little slow, conservative and boring, it later creeps into the consciousness, being subtly odd rather than barking mad, and interesting rather than high-octane. More radical than it seems, and all the better for it.

Until The End Of The World

First of all, we precede this blog posting with an important news bulletin.

Secondly, it’s fairly obvious that this is about the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot as told in the Synoptic Gospels (well, not entirely obvious, but once it’s pointed out), referencing the Final Judgement and the Garden of Gethsemane, as well as what is presumably Judas’ regret afterwards (In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows/But my sorrows they learnt to swim). The song is, overall, kept to a very Biblical three verses, which are in turn kept to a slightly less Biblical eight/ten (first two/last) lines, unless You is too short a line; then we’re back at the Biblical seven.

The song was then not-very-Biblically-at-all submitted to Wim Wenders’ current film, whose soundtrack called for various artists (R.E.M. and Depeche Mode at the height of their fame, Talking Heads at the very end of their existance) to make the music they thought they’d make in 1999. Oddly enough – and this isn’t really a good or bad thing, just an apparent thing – U2, in making one of the more conservative songs musically from Achtung Baby, come closest amongst them and the aforementioned in nailing this, as its circular riff (how circular? Bittorrent [you won't find it any other way] something called “I Feel Free”, which has the riff cycling round more repetitively just to prove it) has modern descendants in “Elevation” and “Vertigo”. By comparison, R.E.M.’s “Fretless” and Depeche Mode’s “Death’s Door” sound too contemporary, and Talking Heads simply split up, thus never having to risk proving themselves wrong.

To be fair, U2 weren’t anticipating an abandonment of guitar solos, with the one included here, whilst not quite as utterly necessary as those in “The Fly” and “Love Is Blindness”, manages nonetheless to sounds reasonably evocative of what’s coming in the third verse. Where “Until The End of the World” truly comes alive, though, is live (see link above), because the build – which can only sound so chaotic on record, becomes amplified amidst the also-chaotic-and-mad ZooTV. Where “Zoo Station” had its static opening, and “The Fly” had its mass of slogans (including BELIEVE, which always seemed to be an interesting exposure of a linguistic oddity), “Until The End of the World” featured flashing lights and either footage of various disasters – tornados, floods, lightning storms and war all flashing quickly as if to suggest it all tumbling upon the planet in an apocalyptic scenario, i.e. the end of the world – or else rapidly flashing numbers and dates marking such things as the assassination of MLK and Bloody Sunday.

“Until The End of the World” isn’t necessarily the best song from Achtung Baby; indeed, many of the singles beat it, and it’s slightly too conservative by either U2 standards or by standards of rock in general (Edge happens to play a Les Paul rather than his usual Explorer on this song, which slightly adds to this feeling) to push it to the very top too. That said, it’s still a great song, even if it is one with the unfortunate task of having to follow “One”.

Last Night On Earth

The first point at which Pop turns into the bleak and dark album its second half largely is starts at the very end of the first half. It also happens to be the third single for the album, although turning up on July 14th when the album had been out since March 3rd meant there was little it could do to make up for the relative failure of the first two singles, despite its return-to-form video and the fact that it’s an album highlight. It’s also the first real song on the album that can be labelled a rock song, given that the previous two were both in the realm of relatively ambient ballads. The very first noise, though, is an extremely rough half-strumming of guitar, which shifts into a full riff, which then dies and decays into a ground of slightly farty synthesisers. Then the proper song kicks in, the same riff returning with a bassline, drumbeat and slightly more cowbell than is tasteful, i.e. the right amount if you’re going to use any at all. There’s also that heavily distorted jabbing that ends each chorus that blurs the line between guitar and keyboards, although a study of liner notes suggests the former at work.

Bono’s voice in the chorus (not recorded at the same time as the verses; in fact, famously [among Pop fans] recorded on the day of mastering) is admittedly shot, although I suppose the consolation prize is a somewhat unintended death-rattling tone that fits the tone nicely. The whole song seems to drop away for the bridge, which emphasises in physical terms the situation – it’s dizzy, spinning, missing, slipping away and so forth. The details are sketched out in the verses, which seem to describe a female protagonist – as is the U2 manner of focusing on the third person, as opposed to the recent and past tendencies of second and occasionally first person narrative – who seemingly lives in the short-term, not bothered in the slightest about future consequences, and thus it would appear, is due for the ultimate downfall. Six songs later, we seem to hear of a female character (not US-based – see note below as to the song’s UK, possibly Ireland setting) in a way that aligns with this narrative.

Interesting namecheck note: with the exception of “The Playboy Mansion”, overt namechecks are rare in U2 songs, but there’s two here in quick succession, namely the News of the World and The Sun. These happen to be the UK tabloid newspaper wing of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Murdoch is, of course, well-known for his strong neoliberal views, which tip his publications towards the Conservatives in the UK and the Republicans in the US. Bono showing his true colours?

Lyrics note: the last two verse lines in the song appear to be She hasn’t been to bed in a week/She’ll be dead soon then she’ll sleep, which is not what the booklet claims (The future is so unpredictable/The past is too uncomfortable). I don’t reckon there’s a significance here, but it is slightly unnerving if you know the lyrics inside out, especially as I tend to regard the lyric booklet in albums as pretty much the definitive source.

Chart note: “Last Night On Earth” reached #10 in the UK and #57 in the US, which is at least 9 and 56 places too low respectively.

Wake Up Dead Man

This is probably U2’s best song about god and religion. A contentious claim, maybe, but the song is tough and willing to ask some huge questions that few other U2 songs have. Described as “stripped-down” by the band, that’s true in the way you wouldn’t expect; normally that means small arrangement, i.e. voice + one acoustic guitar, but here there’s a full rock setup, decks, keyboards and samples (from “Besrodna Nevesta” by Les Mysteres Des Voix Bulgares – no, me neither, but that’s the vocals wailing in the background). No, where it’s stripped-down is in the composition, as bass interjects at points instead of playing full bars, and the guitar swings from one chord to another in pendulum-like fashion. The drumming, when it arrives, is minimal too, playing the same fill each time it becomes necessary. The band originally intended this as a huge gothic rocker when it was start during Zooropa, although that probably would have been a mistake; its quiet nature here trains the focus on the lyrics and makes the whole thing a little more startling.

Incidentally, this song is possibly the only time U2 has come under censorship, with the profanity in And a fucked up world it is too being bleeped on Malaysian editions of Pop, although Malaysia ain’t exactly the most socially liberal nation on the planet. Oddly, they didn’t regard “Mofo” as suspicious, although that’s another issue. The heart of “Wake Up Dead Man” is that, whilst a crisis of faith is occurring, the exact why isn’t certain – the protagonist sees a world that, in his eyes, is dying in terms of morality and social order, and he (I guess he) quite overtly calls on Jesus to “wake up”, to effectively begin the Parousia. Yet there’s several reasons this might be done – either as an Evangelical awaiting the End Times (this song, coincidentally or otherwise, turned up shortly after the start of the Left Behind series), a selfish individual who simply cannot deal with the issues of the world, or an increasingly doubting individual who is maybe asking for proof over faith (after all, Jesus descending from Heaven and blitzing some of the forces of evil would be pretty good evidence). That he refers to Jesus as a “dead man” suggests a degree of doubt (or Unitarianism). Perhaps most spookily, the words She’ll be dead soon/Then she’ll sleep in “Last Night On Earth” seem to resonate in this song, resulting in the lines You’re just around the corner/Did you think to try and warn her? The song doesn’t offer any real solutions, either, simply criticising Jesus for inaction instead, which is ironic considering the society of Pop’s second side and the way it is portrayed as being itself too apathetic and disinterested in truly important issues.

So I argue that “Wake Up Dead Man” is simply U2’s best song about religion simply because it is simply so powerful in its ambiguity, its themes, its ideas and its disquieting mood. Ten years on from “Still Haven’t Found” – which in comparison sounds like a few Sunday afternoon ponderings to fill the spare hours between lunch and dinner – they hit a zenith by properly reaching to the lowest mood and highest drama.

The First Time

Apparently a last-minute thing, recorded live in the studio and unexpected until it happened. I’ll say. “The First Time” is one of those songs that’s so quiet and low-key that, initially, it’s hard to see exactly why or indeed if the song has any power. But as the shortest song on the album, both timewise (3:45) and lyrically (check the booklet), it sounds minimally planned, just vocals, guitar, bass, piano and harmonium (the latter two by Brian Eno), and positioned three tracks from the end, it actually has a climactic feel to it, as if “Dirty Day” and “The Wanderer” are part of an immediate encore. The harmonium creaks in the background, the guitar plays a moderately plaintive line, and the whole thing very gently rises into full-hit piano chords and ethereal epiphany.

Lyrically, this is effectively a musical version of the Prodigal Son parable, which possibly makes this Zooropa’s equivalent of “40″ (that might be why it feels like an album ending). Yet the conclusion is kept open, relatively uncertain (although I get the impression that his ways are changed), with only a reappearance of the refrain – And for the first time/I feel love. Yet the protagonist isn’t unaware of what he has – in the verses he clearly describes a vivacious partner (Shows me colours when there’s none to see) and an extremely loyal sibling (I have a brother/When I’m a brother in need), yet he runs away from it. The descriptions of these individuals isn’t out of character, either, so some sense of realisation may well be dawning, even this early on in the song. This is, then, a song-size expansion of the line in “Dirty Day”, which speaks of holding onto things so tight/You’ve already lost it – that is, the Prodigal Son realising the true value of what he has once it has all been taken for granted and wasted.

Still, this song is a winner in many respects because it’s kept simple, but not overly so. The music seems minimalist, but it’s creeping to somewhere, and the lyrics seem descriptive on paper, but are realised very emotionally (particularly the sheer sense of regret in And I threw away the key). Overall, definitely the highlight of Zooropa’s second side.